


The Think System

by swooning



Category: The Music Man (1962)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:58:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First-time wedding night fluffery, and a lot of UST preceding it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> At the time I first posted this in 2007 on AFF.net, it was the only explicit Music Man fic on the internet. I'd looked everywhere for one, couldn't find any, and wrote one myself because Ifigured Rule 34 demanded it.

Marion was, above all else, a smart girl. A  _reasoning_  kind of a girl. She was most comfortable when dealing with abstractions, concepts, systems.  
  
Harold Hill might not have had much time for thinking about abstractions, but his finely honed instincts about people told him that while the way to Marion’s heart might have been through her family, the way to light her on fire a bit south of that organ was through getting her to  _think_  about it.   
  
Thoughts and words, words and thoughts… and a library full of books to draw on. Once he’d made it clear he was staying on in River City – and times being what they were, a proposal to the town’s librarian was a foregone conclusion – he’d begun making a study of the inventory of that library not only for the books it  _had_ , but those it didn’t have. Periodicals like “The Yellow Book,” for instance. A copy ofFanny Hill… although he thought that might be a set of lessons for after the wedding, rather than before. No need to frighten the girl.  
  
He started with the works she already knew, making his own intense study of what was best and finest and then offering it back to her, preferably whispered into her delicate shell of an ear as the warm summer nights darkened and shadows deepened over the porch swing. Mrs. Paroo left them alone, she had long since made up her mind and what’s more she approved wholeheartedly of the way Marion spent increasing blocks of time staring into space, startling and blushing when she was jolted out of such a reverie. The blushing… a few careful applications of John Donne had resulted in a delicious day of pink cheeks around the library, countless stolen glances and a breathless stolen kiss between the stacks when the building was nearly empty because all the children were back in school. And then Harold had gone back to the little storefront he’d opened the week before, and resumed his place behind the counter to spend the rest of the day selling very little sheet music, and only a few clarinet reeds and one set of banjo strings. He had, however, taken orders for two new Victrolas and several phonograph records… it still astonished him that people were spending the sums they were for these things with so little work on his own part, that  _they_  came to  _him_.  
  
The wedding was set but months away, at Christmas: six months of learning one another, of anticipation… of  _thinking_. In September, during an unexpectedly warm weekend, Harold and Marion had taken advantage of being the oldest courting couple in town and arrived at the footbridge after all the young folks’ curfews were past. He was pleased to see the puzzled frown on her usually smooth brow when they pulled apart after a particularly long kiss, the little sigh of frustration that slipped out. Marion wanted more, but she had so little idea what it was she wanted. How easy it would have been to take advantage; how ironic that she was the one woman of whom he would never even consider taking such advantage. But he relished her frustration, which had only grown more keen after he began lingering longer after each kiss, nibbling at her lips until they parted and then gently teaching her by example how to tease and play with her tongue.   
  
That night at the bridge, he had licked at her luscious mouth until she kissed him back just as urgently, her breathing growing rough; when he pulled her closer, the length of her body against his, she melted into him with no hesitation, and he almost regretted it for the self-control it demanded to keep his hands at her waist instead of letting them slide lower. Higher, perhaps, would be safer… he drew them up along her corseted sides until his thumbs were just under her arms, just a hair’s breadth away from where the delectable swelling began. Stroking there, he willed her to think about him moving his hands, about the time when he  _could_  move them to where he wanted them.   
  
In October it was chilly in the evenings, and on the last night they braved the weather to pause at the bridge he murmured some selected lines of Robert Herrick a bit too close to her ear, and then made love to that same ear and her neck with his lips and tongue. He meant to make her fall, to swoon, but ended up losing himself in the scent of her hair and her skin, the velvety smoothness under his mouth, the  _taste_  of her… making him long to taste the rest of her, making the two months ahead seem like several eternities. When she grabbed his hair rather rudely and dragged his mouth up to hers, he forgot for a few mad moments the strictures about where his hands should not stray… and he was not punished but rewarded, by the amazing sensation of Marion groaning into his mouth and straining closer still. The pressure of her hips, the way the curve of her hips fit perfectly into his hands even through the heavy velvet of her skirt and the rustling petticoat beneath… he knew he should hold her away from his erection, that a gentleman wouldn’t do what he did and hold her there, but for that brief time they were both overwhelmed. They pushed apart eventually, sheepishly, and Harold clutched her slim hands in his and kissed her fingers and professed his love much less eloquently than the poets would have done, and she couldn’t get enough. But from that time forth, all he needed to do was to stare at her neck – which was so often revealed temptingly by the upsweep of her honey-gold hair – and ask her if he could reserve the collected works of the Cavalier Poets again, and she would respond with a little giggling gasp as if anyone hearing must certainly know what he really meant.   
  
He liked to come to the library in the early evenings in November, leaving his store in the care of Tommy Djilas who was shaping up to be a fine salesman with a good ear for the type of music people enjoyed and were likely to buy. Harold would help Marion shelve the last of the books, help her record the last entries of the day in the ledger where she recorded the comings and goings of each volumes, shoo out the last few patrons, and make sure the windows and doors were all secured and the lights out. And then there were those few final unchaperoned minutes of time they thought they could get away with and still emerge respectably together for the walk home… one of the fondest memories Harold would ever have was the expression of anxiety fading to wonder and then sheer desire on his Marion’s face the first time he was bold enough to do more with that time than just steal more kisses, to pull her away from the windows between the shelves and trace the outline of her breasts so carefully with his fingertips that he might have drawn that shape from memory afterward. He wanted, almost too much to bear, to lower his mouth to the peak that he felt forming beneath his thumb, to suckle at the shape through the cloth of her crisp, white blouse until she cried out with pleasure. He didn’t need to; she cried out at the slip of his thumb across the eager little bundle of cotton-covered flesh, and her voice was darker than he expected, frustrated again, husky and glorious… the sound went straight to the firmness in his trousers, and now he didn’t hesitate to tug her closer although he knew he would ultimately find no satisfaction this way.   
  
Emboldened by her response, intoxicated by not just the need for her but by  _her_ , Harold had taken a simpler approach that day and just told her what to think about. And more, of course. “I know I’ll be thinking of this later, Marion… will you be thinking of it? Of my hand, fitting so perfectly there… If I could, I’d kiss you there. I will when I finally can. Think about that, too… about what that will feel like, my mouth against your skin instead of my fingers over your clothes…”  
  
“Yes,” she’d whispered, a sobbing little whisper, and Harold thought he could live for a hundred years on the look she gave him before her eyes closed. He teased at her nipple more firmly, cupping her other breast tenderly, bringing forth a series of moans from his beautiful, willing victim.   
  
It had been too brief, but any longer would have been a danger in too many ways and so they emerged into the cool of the night, Harold welcoming the effect of the chill and Marion tugging her coat a little closer around her waist with a blush – not against the cold, but because she felt her body’s response to Harold’s touch must still be as visible as a marquis to any who passed by.   
  
It was a small town, and a town full of gossips, but since they had collectively decided to welcome Harold Hill and repaint their previous image of the librarian from slatternly to virtuous, prying eyes looked elsewhere. In the early weeks of December Mrs. Paroo looked elsewhere, too, and if Marion and her beau remained together in the parlor long after the rest of the household was asleep, well… the wedding was almost upon them, and her late bloomer of a daughter surely had ground to regain in this area. She knew, of course, that Marion had been doing a lot of thinking lately; but she also knew that the thinking was unlikely to lead to cold feet, in this particular case. She only hoped, in her practical way, that it did not lead to any children born embarrassingly hard on the heels of the wedding; but it was already December now and the wedding was just weeks away, so the danger was most likely past in any case and it was clear Harold was not planning to do a last-minute scarper. The music store was doing well, beyond all their expectations, and Harold was gaining a respectability in town that seemed to surprise him most of all. Mrs. Paroo liked the idea of grandchildren.   
  
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Marion would whisper as his fingers first toyed with her blouse buttons, then slowly unfastened them one by one, revealing creamy skin that he thought he could never spend enough time touching. Or kissing… although the skin whose taste he liked best so far wasn’t creamy, it was a dusky pink and grew darker as it grew firmer under his suckling lips. A flick of his tongue across the dimpled roughness would make Marion shiver and gasp, and he wondered if he might bring her to a crisis that way, and he wondered if she had ever had a climax. He knew some said women didn’t have them, but he was experienced enough to know full well that women in fact  _did_ , and that some women had them quite easily… Marion was pliable and warm in his arms on the night he first dared venture beneath her clothes, a week before their wedding, her fingers laced into his hair as he savored her breasts and the silky skin between them, and the hand that wasn’t supporting her seemed to slip into her lap of its own accord. Nestled there, just at the top of her thigh, and he pulled back with an apology on his lips when he felt her freeze; the apology never made it out of his mouth, because she kissed him fiercely and gripped his hand too firmly for him to remove it.   
  
“Harold, I’ve been thinking about that, too,” she moaned softly when next their mouths were free, and then she stroked the back of his hand to make sure he would be in not doubt as to what she meant.   
  
He recovered with laudable speed considering how the blood rushed away from his brain, and decided the advantage was being  _given_ to him to push. “Have you, now? You naughty little thing, Miss Marion. In the middle of the library, in broad daylight, you’re thinking about  _this_?” He trailed his fingers into the crook of her lap, curling the back of his hand into the dip of her broadcloth skirt and pressing down gently. Caught in his gaze, she blushed brilliantly but then smiled that electric smile and shook her head, causing a loose curl to bob charmingly around her shoulder.   
  
“Not in the library, at night in bed,” she murmured, and then lifted her hands to her lips in horror at what she’d said.   
  
Harold caught her fingers, pulling them away and shaking his head gently in amusement. “And what, my sweet, are you doing while you’re having all these thoughts, lying in your little bed at night?” He knew what the subtle shift and press of his fingers was doing to her, and found it irresistible.   
  
“I… I can’t…” She shook her head again, and Harold frowned at her and stilled his hand.   
  
“Do you want me to stop?”  
  
“No,” she admitted instantly, and then looked away, ashamed. Caught. “I should…”  
  
He captured her lips again, kissing until she kissed him back properly, feeling a thrill at the knowledge that he’d been the one to teach her how to do that. It was nothing compared to the knowledge of what he had yet to teach her. Perhaps because he had been made to wait for so long, perhaps because he truly seemed to love this often infuriating but undeniably lovely woman, Harold found himself driven nearly mad by thinking about what they would do not only on the wedding night but afterwards,  _years_  of possibilities, and the true test of his salesmanship would be in convincing her that each new delight was not only right and good but something she desired as much as he did.   
  
For the moment, the idea seemed to be selling itself. Marion was leaning into his kiss, even letting the shift of her weight on the couch part her legs the slightest bit… and then she was gone, with a furious blush and a gasp, clutching the placket of her unbuttoned blouse together in one hand and holding her skirt in the other to make her flight up the stairs possible. He knew she heard his stage-whispered “I love you,” because she looked back at that moment with a panicked smile, just before dashing up the stairs and out of his sight. “And I’ll see myself out,” he finished when she was gone, and he did so, grinning from ear to ear all the way back to the little house he had purchased a few blocks away, the house where they would live together once they were married. It was cold, and the fire took too long to warm the room where he slept, but he added an extra blanket and went to sleep still smiling in anticipation.


	2. Chapter 2

The wedding, which was fairly small, wasn’t as onerous as they’d both feared; there were some wry comments, some backhanded compliments, some moments that seemed to stretch out forever. But things went smoothly, Marion was beautiful and Harold very handsome and self-assured, and all in all it was a success.   
  
They had decided to spend the wedding night in a hotel in Des Moines, and they arrived there by taxi from the train station just as the sun was disappearing below the horizon. It was cold, that day after Christmas, and the pair were bundled almost beyond recognition. They still needed dinner, their bags were heavy, and they were exhausted from the day… but their wedding night nearly started the minute the door was closed, because Marion threw herself enthusiastically at her new husband and took his breath away with a kiss that left little room for doubt about her intentions.   
  
“Dinner first,” he insisted, and she admitted it was a good idea. They had eaten a box lunch on the train, but that was hours ago, and in any case now that the time had finally arrived they were both a little nervous about it: Marion because it was new and she wasn’t quite sure what to expect despite all the build-up, and Harold because he was desperate to be sure she enjoyed it enough to want to keep doing it. It was a quiet dinner in a fine restaurant down the street from the hotel, but when they returned it wasn’t just quietly but silently. The winter streets were almost deserted, a fine dusting of fresh snow chasing away most would-be late-night revelers. Without the bustle of activity and the practical necessities to think about, of getting the bags from the train to the car to the hotel, Marion felt suddenly shy of every passerby; she was ready to sink into the ground when the desk clerk called them “Mr. and Mrs. Hill” as they stopped to pick up their key. Surely, she thought, they all knew what was about to happen in that room up there.   
  
Only the feel of Harold’s fingers, wrapped strong and sure and warm in hers, kept her moving; how strange, she marveled, that the very fingers whose touch sustained her were also those whose touch she felt such an agony of nerves about as they crossed the lobby to the elevator, making no conversation but only nodding politely to the elevator operator. A little squeeze of his hand in hers before he released her to pull out the key and unlock the door… and then he grinned that impossibly winning grin of his and swept her off her feet to carry her over the threshold of the room, closing the door behind them with his foot.   
  
Harold thought he could easily carry her forever, she was such an unexpectedly tiny little thing; he always forgot, every time, always thought of her as being larger, and was surprised every time he saw her to realize she was so small. Child-sized, almost; it was her personality that filled the room, of course. But her body, though small, was definitely not that of a child in his arms. And her lips under his, warm and tasting a little of steak and wine, and were already knowledgeable enough to make his pulse race.   
  
He needed to buy himself a little time, to get his own raw nerves under control. “I know your mother made you buy a fancy nightgown, don’t you think you should go put it on?” He set her down gently on her feet, next to where her suitcase was resting on a little stand.  
  
She laughed out loud, a little of her usual spirit resurfacing through the anxiety. “Harold, the last thing I want to think about right now is my  _mother_.” He laughed easily with her and then, deciding that he rather liked to see her consternation as it was such a rarity, brought her back to a full-on panic with his next words.   
  
“Fancy nightgowns are much easier to remove than fancy going-away dresses with corsets underneath them.” And then added, because it seemed appropriate, “You are astonishingly beautiful when you blush that way, Maid Marion. I’ll miss calling you that, by the way, but… only a little. Now stop dawdling and go change.”   
  
“Yes, Harold,” she said with uncharacteristic meekness, and opened her suitcase with trembling fingers to pull out the things she needed.   
  
Whistling a merry tune – not the Minuet in G, not a march, just something young Djilas had been playing on the Victrola all week – Harold busied himself opening his own suitcase and rummaging around in it, giving Marion a little time and privacy to disappear into the bathroom. When she’d finally closed the door he sank to the bed in a moment of abject fear, quickly quelled, that he wouldn’t be up to this evening’s work. It didn’t last long… he was Harold Hill, after all, being caught and domesticated by this lovely creature could never change  _that_ … and within minutes he was out of his shoes and jacket, shirtsleeves rolled up, having decided against changing into his own pajamas.   
  
In the bathroom, Marion was in twin states of distress and undress, trying to decide what to do with her hair (take it down and brush it? But Harold had often said he liked it up), her underthings ( _no_  underthings? It seemed so  _drastic_ ), and even the mundane matter of bedroom slippers.  _‘He loves me,’_  she reminded herself finally,  _‘and he wants this… whatever this is. He’s not going to care about my slippers or my hair.’_  She ended up behaving as though she were simply preparing for bed, keeping her slippers on because her feet were truly cold on the tiles of the bathroom floor, taking her corset and camisole off but leaving her drawers on, and washing her face thoroughly. Her hair… it got in the way when it was down, she knew that, but she wanted the extra time it gave her to take the pins and combs out, and to brush it… and then she almost cried, realizing she’d left her hairbrush in her suitcase, out there in the other room, where Harold was waiting. Combing through the mass of curls with her fingers did little to tame them, and she was forced to settle the whole mess back from her face and shoulders as best she could before squaring off and opening the door.   
  
She had been right about the slippers; Harold could not have been less interested in them. Nor, actually, in the beautiful pink satin gown she had ordered for the occasion on her mother’s insistence. He had eyes only for her face, pale and drawn though she thought it probably was given the way she was feeling, and her hair, which she pushed out of the way futilely only to have it spring back over her shoulders. She smiled uncertainly, taking in the sight of Harold in his suspenders and shirt-sleeves, his tie off and enough buttons undone at his neck to show just a scrap of soft hair on his chest. It distracted her to think he was also going to be unclothed in a few minutes; her main concern had been with her own exposure, the idea of being naked with a man. She hadn’t really thought as much about the fact that he would be naked, too. She already felt exposed, she realized, by the way Harold was looking at her as he walked toward her now; his eyes took in  _everything_ , and she felt she might have just as well been nude for all the protection the silky gown and drawers gave her.   
  
“Beautiful,” was Harold’s only comment, and then he worked his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck and used it to gently draw her close enough to kiss… and Marion forgot a little of her fear as the now-familiar sensation started to coil and swirl low in her stomach. He used her hair to lever her head back a little, granting him better access to her neck, and he spent some time there conquering a few more anxieties, distracting her from thinking because now, at the moment of truth, thinking was the  _last_  thing he wanted her to be doing. If he had done his job well these past months, she would already have been thinking about this night quite enough; now was the time to push those thoughts aside and let the long-anticipated sensation take over. Now was the time to pick up the instrument and hear how, as if by magic, the notes would come out in just the way one had imagined they would.   
  
He had turned out most of the lights, leaving only a single lamp burning to appreciate her by. Even that one light seemed too much for Marion, who was suddenly struck with an almost painful shyness. “Can we… Harold, can I turn it off. May I? If it were dark…”  
  
“If it were dark,” he said firmly, “I couldn’t see you. And I’ve waited a long time to see you. The light stays on, Mrs. Hill.”  
  
Her eyes grew huge at the title, although it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it that day. Somehow hearing  _him_  say it, and say it while his arms were wrapped so firmly around her barely-covered form, demanding to see her in the light, was another thing entirely. As if to confirm his ownership, he slipped his hands lower and began boldly fondling her derriere, never releasing her gaze. When one hand tracked back upward and began the meticulous work of unbuttoning all the tiny buttons holding together the front of Marion’s nightdress, her eyes fluttered shut as she tried to catch her breath. Fingers against silk against skin, slipping and fondling, pinching and soothing… and then the gown was gone, its usefulness already outlived, sliding to the floor in a forgotten puddle of silk the exact color of Marion’s blushing skin. Pink over creamy white, that darker pink puckering instantly under Harold’s fingers, then firmer still beneath his lips, a longer sample of what he had only dared taste once before, those few nights ago before she’d fled up the stairs. One side first, then the other… the feel of Marion’s hands, tentatively weaving into his hair as he bent at her breast, seemed to go straight to his groin. As did her little whimpers and sighs, the early little shy sounds of pleasure that he hoped would soon be replaced by his name, moaned or perhaps even howled in his ear.   
  
The room wasn’t all that big so the bed wasn’t far, and it was a matter of seconds to pick her up by the waist – tiny as she was, he didn’t even need to release her breast from his mouth, the maneuver was hardly any exertion at all – and move her to the edge of the bed. He let her nipple go with a small  _pop_  then, just long enough to put her down there and then join her, drawing her over to sit in the middle of the bed facing him. Harold took a moment to admire the picture she made, her silky drawers still bundled around her waist and thighs but the rest of her utterly open to him except what was shielded by the wild honey curls tumbling around her shoulders. Nude from her tiny waist up, sitting as boldly upright as a statuette, her firm high breasts announcing her arousal; she was better than any collection of French postcards, better than a burlesque show, a million times better than the occasional relief at the hands or mouth of a back-alley hussy or even the few extremely friendly girls he knew here and there who weren’t quite whores but weren’t exactly free either. He had never felt such a pull before. Time, they had plenty of time, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to be going anywhere suddenly, not in the middle of the night or the middle of next week…  
  
Marion was considering him now, less in fear than in what looked like a hint of curious anticipation. Harold expected her to try to cover herself but she didn’t, she just sat with her hands draped gracefully at her sides, fingers absently plucking at the coverlet, seeming if anything a little impatient. She didn’t like to be bad at things, or even new at things, he had already discovered. Her behavior could even be said, at times, to border on bad sportsmanship; those were times when she was either losing, or thought she might be about to lose. Harold smiled in what he hoped was an encouraging way before he angled his mouth over hers again… he planned for them both to win.   
  
Her kiss demonstrated the shyness and inexperience her demeanor hadn’t, all hesitant lips and reticent tongue. Harold kept coaxing, kept soothing her mouth with his, as he indulged in feeling his way over every inch of the skin revealed to him. Her back, slender and smooth with skin like satin over sleek muscles that flexed under his hands as she breathed. Her waist, so small he could almost span it with his hands… he grew harder still thinking, for the first time in his life, of that waist disappearing one day as her belly swelled with their child,  _his_  child. Flat belly, a little ticklish, and he used that surprise tactic to throw her off balance and lower her the rest of the way to the bed, still giggling. The movement made the soft flesh of her bosom jiggle delightfully, and he couldn’t resist returning there again with mouth and hand. Marion didn’t seem to mind. When Harold looked up to watch her face, to gauge his progress, he was enthralled by the look of utter concentration she wore; it deepened with each halting, shallow breath. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but not from fear this time; her lips, parted and moist, spoke without words of her rapidly building desire.   
  
Slowly, slowly he worked his way back up her neck, lingering over the spots that seemed most sensitive, resisting the temptation to roll her beneath him. She had fallen to her back and lay in an unintentionally artful pose, the knee farthest from him bent a little, the toes of the opposite foot pointing and curling unconsciously. Propped on his side next to her, Harold regretted having only one hand free, but couldn’t complain about the view, or the reaction that one hand was getting. He moved it chastely to her waist first, only sliding it lower after her response to his attentions at her neck and ear grew more vocal. It was nearly too much, the feel of her silk-covered haunch under his hand, the knowledge that only that one, thin layer of fabric was between them and that if he just tore it away… but he mastered himself and soldiered on, because this first time it was, it  _had_  to be, all about Marion. Promising himself that at some point in their life together, he would rip off her drawers and ravish her and she’d enjoy it, he put the temptation aside for the night and focused valiantly on urging his bride willingly from innocence into knowledge.   
  
It was a trip she was obviously eager to take; Harold was surprised to feel her tiny, nimble fingers on his shirt, tugging open a few more buttons and then taking just the tiniest pause before sneaking beneath the fabric to flatten and slide over the planes of his chest. He couldn’t help chuckling when she stopped cold at the feel of his nipple hardening beneath her touch. “Don’t stop, sweet. It feels good.”   
  
“I’m… should I have asked first?”  
  
“Did  _I_  ask first when I did it to you?”  
  
Her eyes opened with a start, then darkened as she thought about his first touches there. “No,” she whispered.   
  
“Then I don’t see why you should have to. Fair is fair. Mmm… you stopped,” he chided. “But if it makes you feel better, I hereby give you permission to touch any part of my person that interests you. Provided, of course, that the permission is reciprocal.”  
  
“Oh!” Another blush, he could tell, even without sufficient light to see her cheek pinkening. “I thought… well, you already  _have_ permission to… of course,  _you_  can… oh, don’t laugh at me, it’s too embarrassing!” Because he was laughing over her own rueful chuckle, laughing and pulling her closer for another kiss, not one that teased or hinted this time; it was a kiss that went straight to the point, he was making love to her mouth with his tongue, and his hand on her hip pulled her over firmly against his burgeoning erection and pinned her there. A nudge of his knee was enough to part her legs and admit his thigh between them for the first time. It was a ruthless move; he knew that Marion knew the mechanics of the thing quite well, he knew what books she’d consulted and even teased her about a few of them. He knew she would feel the press of his hips for what it was, a presaging and parody of their eventual task here. But it was the arch of her back under his hand as she strained closer to him that was almost his undoing.   
  
He had made plans, and he intended to implement them, and he acknowledged to himself that whether or not they had all the time in the world in the greater sense, his constitution could only withstand so much this particular evening. With that in mind, he lifted his hand to the drawstring he had already mapped out as falling just at her belly-button, and untied her undergarment with one calculated movement. Though it would have been the work of a moment then to push them down, he didn’t have to; to his immense surprise, Marion did it herself with a few swift, impatient motions, her eyes shut tight once more. She felt strung as tight as a violin string under his hand, her breathing as fast as if she’d just sprinted up several flights of stairs.   
  
“Shhh…” Harold said as he bent back to her chest, sticking with the familiar despite the magnetic pull of the areas they’d just exposed. “Catch your breath, Maid Marion. Nothing is going to happen right this second. Tell me why you’re so nervous…”  
  
“I’m not nervous,” she squeaked.   
  
“Tell me,” he growled softly around her nipple, and let his hand ride just to the point of her hipbone and rest there.   
  
“I  _can’t_ ,” she admitted, her hand fluttering down to touch his and then back up to his chest. “I don’t know why. I mean I don’t really know… what to expect.” Her frustration with this piece of ignorance was evident; she sounded affronted.   
  
He thought he knew what she meant… the mechanics, yes, the emotions, yes, but Marion would have wanted the sort of in-between particulars that weren’t available in the books available to her. Perhaps he should have drummed up a copy of Fanny Hill after all… “Would you like me to  _tell_  you what to expect? Give you a… a sort of précis?”   
  
“Could you? Oh! No, no, that’s not… I don’t think –“  
  
Harold interrupted her stammering with a certain raw glee. “Oh, yes I could. In fact I think I owe it to us both, sweet.” He ran his free hand up her side and then back down to her thigh, drawing her attention back to the fact of her nudity. “So beautiful… I knew you would be. Perfect.” When she seemed primed to shrink back into herself, pull her hands over her breasts automatically as he’d known she would at some point, he shook his head firmly. “You never have anything to hide from me. Don’t do that, you understand? No shyness between the two of us.”   
  
“It makes me feel…  _wanton_ , not shy,” she shocked him by saying. Except that she was obviously troubled by the feeling, as wanton was not a way nice young ladies were ever supposed to feel. “I think there must be something wrong with me.”  
  
“ _Wrong_? Good Lord, wife, I would have thought at least your mother had the sense to teach you better than that.”   
  
“Would you  _please_  stop talking about my mother, Harold?” They giggled again, the solemn mood broken, and Harold nudged his way a little closer still, body and mind, telling her what to expect.   
  
“She ain’t here,” he agreed. “But you are, and you, dear one, are absolutely breathtaking. And my plan is first to taste every inch of you. Yes, I do mean  _every_  inch.” For Marion had raised a skeptical eyebrow at his choice of modifier. “Now… tell me, since you wouldn’t say the other night, just what  _have_  you been doing in your bed at night, thinking of this?”  
  
“I… nothing. What I thought of doing seemed… just wrong. I didn’t really know what to do, I just wanted  _something_  so badly. Oh, Harold, please let’s stop talking and just kiss me again.”   
  
“A little of both,” he conceded, kissing her soundly but then pulling back because he couldn’t get enough of watching her expressive face as each new sensation passed across it. “And now… what you might have been doing, and probably thought was wrong… something like this, perhaps?” And he slid his hand lower at last, letting his fingertips curl and play just at the point of the vee where her legs joined. Soft skin at the pads of her inner thighs, soft curls that had never felt this sort of touch, the soft cry that Marion gave, her hand clasping Harold’s upper arm impulsively. “Or perhaps even…” One finger dipped further along the crease, seeking moisture and finding it, as he widened her legs with his thigh between them and kissed her again deeply, matching the rhythm of his tongue to that of his stroking finger.   
  
From her immediate response, he thought he could probably bring her to a climax right then if he kept going, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that quite yet. So responsive, though… he released her mouth and watched her again intently as he angled his finger a bit more sharply and probed cautiously further, dipping the tip just inside her petal-soft virgin folds and spreading the slickness around before slipping inside again a bit deeper. Little by little, and when he fetched up against a place that was distinctly tighter her eyes opened again with her wince of discomfort and she gave him a wry little smile.   
  
“ _That’s_  something I’m nervous about.”   
  
“It’s only the first few times that it hurts a bit,” he said calmly, never ceasing the gentle motion of his finger, testing her passage with gentle thrusts that barely admitted the width of that digit; but a flick of his thumb against the tight little bundle of nerves just above her cunt, and she cried out in surprise and parted her legs further, unwittingly letting him drive a little deeper. “And I’ll make it worth your while while you’re getting used to it, I promise.”   
  
“But… how does…?” Her eyes flicked down to the hard cloth-covered bulge pressing against her thigh, then back up to Harold’s face.   
  
“… it fit?” he finished her question. “It fits. It’s what we’re made to do. Is that what has you so worried, little one?”  
  
She nodded shyly, clearly chagrined but still intrigued beneath it, and increasingly distracted by the feelings he was stirring with his continued ministrations inside her. He knew it would likely not last, because he tended to suspect that once she had grown accustomed to making love with him she would be as wanton as any shameless scarlet woman ever had been, at least when they were alone together; in fact, he rather looked forward to that. But for the moment, her shyness and delicate innocence were delicious to him, and he tried to hold them in his hands like a crystal goblet, like an umblemished peach, keeping them from harm’s way. Even though he knew her knowledge would come, tonight, at the price of a little pain – perhaps more than a little, given how very small she was – he still hoped for some preservation of that freshness, that wide-eyed wonder she was exhibiting at each new hint of the pleasure to come.  
  
But he had to start somewhere, sometime, inflicting the first bruise on that peach. “It will hurt the first few times. But it can also feel very, very good if you trust me. Do you trust me, Marion?”   
  
“ _Yes_ …” She would have trusted him to sell her any snake oil he was peddling at the moment, would have bought blocks of ice in January, if only he would keep doing  _that_  with his hand, he suspected. But his plans were specific, and he meant to see them through. He had dreamed for months of what she might taste like, and now he scooted lower and climbed between her thighs a little awkwardly, quickly, before she had time to protest, holding her legs open firmly with hands and body when she tried to close them, to shield herself.   
  
“Trust me,” he reminded her, sounding more casual than he felt, and pressed a series of gentle kisses along one milky inner thigh until her head dropped back to the mattress with a moaning little sigh. Mouth and hands, lips and fingers marking the inevitable path from knees to almost-there, until he could tell he had succeeded in this current goal: pausing just shy of the spot was making her think about it, and she was growing so aroused with the thought that he could smell her excitement, inches away, tangy-sweet and irresistible. A tiny lick, the taste and scent like a hand grasping his member, and then a longer taste along the length of her outer lips. He felt his way back to where he had been with one finger, but sweetened the pain with an exploratory sweep of his tongue against that most eager portion of her anatomy and was rewarded when she pressed her hips against him with a little cry of wonder. His finger was buried almost fully inside her, and he risked gently pulling it out and thrusting it deeper a few times, never stopping the play of his tongue. Marion matched him move for move, subtly at first but then with greater and greater abandon. He teased a second finger in alongside the first, causing a little squeak that turned into a sharper cry of pleasure when he suckled suddenly on the nub between his lips, flicking his tongue ruthlessly and pumping his fingers more quickly inside her tight passage until he felt the muscles jump and heard the desperation in her cries change to bliss for a few precious moments before finally tapering to a breathy incoherence. Nothing, nothing in the wide world, had ever been more beautiful to Harold Hill than the sight before him at that moment: Marion, spread out like a luscious banquet of flesh, her limbs flung wide by her ecstasy and her face still bearing all the astonished joy of her first climax. And  _he_ had been the one to give it to her.   
  
He kept his fingers inside her and climbed back up her body, planting a kiss on her startled lips that tasted of her sex and his smugness. When he finally did remove his hand, she gave a little cry of disappointment that he catalogued along with the previous vision as among his favorite things of all time. “Impatient?”   
  
“Harold?” She curled towards him as he pulled away; the tremors that seemed to shake her told him the orgasm was still wreaking havoc with her body, and he nearly gave in and dove back into her lap. Only the prospect of being inside her could possibly have torn him away.   
  
He was surprised to find his own hands shaking a little as he unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way and shrugged his way out of his suspenders. He was further surprised, although he supposed by now he shouldn’t have been, when Marion sat up and added her own quivering fingers to the mix, pushing his shirt off his shoulders as he unfastened his trousers and wriggled out of them and his drawers. Too late, he realized he’d left himself wide open; the first touch of Marion’s curious hand on the tip of his manhood was like a sweet electric shock, so unexpected and wonderful he almost embarrassed himself by spending his seed all over her hand. A few breaths, a moment to get used to the idea, and he had himself under control enough to watch as she tentatively explored him.   
  
Only once, when her eyes flicked up to his and saw him watching her with intense fascination, did her confidence seem to falter. “You said… any part that interested me?” It was scrumptious, her expression, exactly that of a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.   
  
He wrapped his fingers over hers, tightening her grip and showing her how to slide the smooth skin over the hardness beneath. “Like this… and you can touch me here, too.” Tugging her other hand into his lap, he guided her to cup and squeeze his sac while stroking his length. Her touch was a bit too light, too unsure, it was maddening. When she licked her lips, taking her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, it took all his will power not to suggest she try a taste.  _You still have a maiden to deflower, Hill…_ he reminded himself. But he found he wasn’t thinking of it that way, so much; he didn’t want to take something away, he wanted to give her something… himself, pleasure, someday even children. He didn’t know when he had urged her back down to the bed, but found himself poised there over her, still glorying in the feel of her hand on him, the fact that she didn’t automatically bring him closer to her entrance a blunt reminder of her inexperience.   
  
Harold left a tender kiss on her mouth and then pushed up on one hand, placing the other over hers again and stroking his engorged tip over her swollen nether lips with their combined hands, only releasing himself to slip a finger inside her when she seemed to have the idea. When he took his hand away again Marion fumbled a little before finding the right angle, lifting her hips into him as she pressed him to rest against her opening.   
  
“Just the first few times,” he reminded her apologetically, seating himself more firmly, trembling with the fight to maintain self-control at the feel of her hot, glove-tight passage cupping his weeping tip. She would feel made for him… she would be made for him, shaped for him, because he would be the one to shape her. The thought was too much, he surged forward against the little scrap of tissue that still resisted, and heard her tiny gulping sob of pain through a haze of pleasure at the feel of being fully inside her at last, surrounded by her slick heat.   
  
Forcing himself to stay still, he pulled back to kiss her gently, lick away a stray tear that threatened to slide into her ear, smooth her hair back from her face with all the love and care he could muster. “Open your eyes, Marion,” he insisted, needing to see her… needing her to see him. “You feel like heaven…”  
  
“I thought… you would move.”  
  
He tried not to laugh, sensing her feelings might too easily be hurt at such a time… so sweet… so warm around him, it was all he could do  _not_  to move. “I will in a minute, sweet. Does it still hurt?”  
  
Experimentally, she moved under him, and he gritted his teeth at the pleasure her squirming sent thrilling up his spine. “I… no, hardly any at all. It did at first, but… they said  _agonizing_ , that wasn’t agonizing.”  
  
“They?” He risked a subtle push deeper, and her full wide-eyed attention was back on his face in an instant. She clutched at his arms as if trying to force an understanding of this new thing out of its agent and deliverer.   
  
“The… the ladies. Last night when they were helping Mama get things ready for the reception, there were so many sly remarks about ‘the agony of a bride,’ and ‘a wife’s duty to be borne with bravery…’ Harold, I was so frightened, I thought it would be  _awful_. Is… or is there something else I don’t know about?”  
  
He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be angry at the idiocy that had caused his sweet wife such misery as she anticipated this night, the night he had wanted her to think about only with pleasure and perhaps a certain amount of unseemly lust. “There’s nothing else, my love… nothing that hurts, anyway. Only more of this.” He demonstrated, thrusting more easily as she started to relax and push back against him, puzzlement rapidly replaced by a sweet look of curiosity and relief and growing enjoyment. “If it was ever awful, somebody’s husband was doing it wrong,” he added smugly, lifting just enough to nudge his thumb between them and tease at the crucial spot again. “You’ll be sore tomorrow, and it will hurt tomorrow night… but only a little, and less each time. Mmm… what was that again?”  
  
Because she had interrupted him inadvertently with a throaty mumble, something like, “Harold… ooooh…. good, so…  _so_  good...” Abandoning talk, he brushed against her more firmly, sliding in and out of her with more and more certainty, trying to draw out the moment as long as he could now it had come, because he thought he could never grow tired of seeing Marion beneath him this way, her face transformed by what he was doing to her. And now her breath was coming faster with a little gasp each time he hit the depth of her, and to his amazement he felt her clenching around his shaft; her little nails dug into his shoulders recklessly and she started whimpering and crying out his name again and again until she shuddered and broke and collapsed into bliss beneath him. Overcome, he followed her headlong into that rapture with just a few sharper thrusts, emptying his seed deep inside her with a ragged cry of pleasure that turned into “Marion” before it trailed off at last into oblivion.


End file.
